So, does anyone still post letters? I realise it's a fading trade, maybe like print; where every so often an echoing call that magazines and newspapers will be heading to the big news stand in the sky and the impending doom of all things analogue.
Maybe not just yet, but if the continuing trend of a 9% reduction in sending letters last year continues (damn you electronic mail and your teasing subject lines) then I would think my presentation of 3 large mailer filled letters to the clerk behind the slightly excessive security glass, the stuff that means you have to shout in your loudest "I'M IN A CLUB" voice at the tellor, would be welcomed with open, clammy, nervously excited arms.
Apparently not.
In sending my final batch of mailers, I paid the postage, and handed the clerk my letters.
He looked at me and then slid my letters back.
Maintaining eye contact and my confused brow, I slid the envelopes back toward him.
His acknowledgement of my return of serve troubled him.
I noticed this. Stopping immediately what I was doing.
There was a pause.
"YOU have to post the letters", he snapped.
"I can't post them in case I lose them."
So, I guess that's it for Post Offices then. They have stopped posting letters, apparently. In future, I'll have to bulk up anything I want to send and pretend i'm flogging it post-ebay so they think it's a parcel and therefore profitable.
So the next time you need to post something in an envelope (Google it if you've forgotten), save yourselves the time and effort in standing in the huge, sweaty, dim lit, guy speaking to himself behind you, oxygen starved queue and send it yourself.